Pecking Order of Survival

Someone asked me last week of Therapist had a timeline of when I'd be able to function more freely mentally for schoolwork and whatnot. I wish that I'd said that I'm actually ahead of schedule. Truth is that I will always be right where I need to be, even if that current place sucks. I mean, what else could I be doing?
About a day after I got that question, this piece from The Onion slid thru my tumblr dashboard. I found it very fitting. I showed it to Therapist, who loved it.

I don't really know how to do more than I'm doing. My schoolwork is not up to my standard. School is about survival right now, not success. I didn't envision my doctorate playing out like this. It's hard not to feel pathetic or weak. One friend pointed out that I'm doing awesome in character growth, in healing. Another friend said that I deserve a silver medal for all that I'm doing (I don't like yellow gold). Silver is my favorite.

I actually believe that this is true, which is big for me, of course. Unfortunately it's not gonna play out that way academically.

But I sit down and ask myself what's more important, my health or a college class? Previously I would've just sacrificed everything else for the grade. I can't do that anymore--like I am physically and mentally incapable of that option.

So I listen to Adele, Jackson Browne, The Avett Brothers, my friend's music to calm me down. I listen to Daft Punk's Tron when I simply can't think anymore. I paint. I write. I draw. I watch baseball. I talk to friends.

I deal weekly lately with various forms of panic attacks. Daily with anxiety now. Last Wednesday I hugged my dad goodbye as he's at Fort Benning now getting ready for a 5-month Red Cross stint in Afghanistan. I'll tell you just how well I'm doing about that. September 16, you need to come RIGHT NOW.

A friend suggested that I need a milestone for each of the 5 months that he's gone, something to look forward to. One will definitely be a Braves-Mets game in Atlanta. I've never seen my favorite team play in person. Maybe this will happen twice.


So I am left asking myself daily what's more important? What can I do today? How can I survive today? How can I thrive today? What can be just enough?

Sometimes I feel like saying eff everything. Some days I want a hardship withdrawal from life. Other days I feel like I might just make it.

What usually wins out is the idea that on the crappy days, another really good one will come soon and it'll be awesome and I will love it and I will be so happy.

I'm grateful for those happy days. I'm grateful for how they carry me thru the sucky days. I'm grateful for music. I'm grateful for friends and family. I'm grateful that my dad will most likely not leave the base for the 5 months he's in Afghanistan. I'm grateful for baseball and how it calms my soul. I'm grateful for sunlight that buoys me up. I'm grateful for art. I'm grateful for school b/c I would've collapsed without it over the last 18 months. I can't believe it's been a year and a half since I realized that I was molested.

I really am grateful for life. It's odd how much I do like life considering everything, I guess. Maybe it's not odd. I've had more wonderful by far than I've had terrible. I'm grateful for that, too.

the hardest part about teaching

I love teaching, love it dearly. It takes me about 20 minutes into the semester to realize that my students are the best students. I'm always right, too.

There is one part about teaching that has never been easy for me. This morning I got an email from a student saying that her grandma had passed away yesterday. She actually apologized for missing class. A couple of weeks into the semester her grandpa passed away, too. After that happened she told me that it was bringing back lots of feelings and memories of a few years ago when her dad died of cancer. I almost cried with her.

This morning in a different class I saw one of my students with kind of red eyes. Allergies are hitting and she'd had a cold recently, no biggie. Until she came up to the front after class with tears in her eyes, trying to talk. I told her to follow me into the room across the hall. She told me that her best friend had been having terrible headaches and she finally went to the emergency room last night and the doctors found a bad infection that had spread to her brain. They were going to try to perform surgery, but there was no way to save her. She died this morning and my student's mom called right before class to tell her.

I don't know how she made it thru class. She had a test right after our class, so she decided to stay. All I could do was hug her and we talked for a while longer.

This is the hardest part of teaching: seeing my students suffer thru really hard things and feel that they need to apologize for missing class. I told my student this morning that I loved her, but didn't really want to see her for the rest of the week.

I love teaching Portuguese. I love seeing students think that the language is great, because I remember feeling that way when I first started learning in 101. But what I love to see more than anything is the growth in students, that they've learned that I know that they can do whatever they want to do, that their potential is higher than they ever imagined.

But sometimes the most important thing that I want them to know is that I love them.

Aura: yellow, but sometimes purple

I generally have really awesome students. On Tuesday one of my students stayed after to get help with adjectives and adverbs. After we were done talking he started to walk out of the classroom, but paused, turned to me and said, "I can see faint auras in people. Usually you are yellow. Today you're purple, though." So I asked him what yellow meant. He said that it means that I'm a good teacher. Purple apparently means that I'm seeking for truth and knowledge. He then said that purple and indigo settle into blue when someone has found the truths they were looking for.

I don't believe in auras or anything, but I love that he sees those things in me. It made my day.

Zee Mission Revisited

If you go to lunch with a Mormon and ask the question, "Why are there so many Christian churches?" you're gonna get a good answer. Xiangyu and I had a fun chat.


Also, today in Syntax we were talking about question sentences and how you invert the subject and the verb to ask questions. So, "You will eat today." turned into "Will you eat today?" The teacher really emphasized the will to make her point. And it was all I could do to not chuckle heartily and then ask if the class had any concerns that I could resolve.